R. M. Hare
Richard Mervyn Hare FBA (21 March 1919 – 29 January 2002), usually cited as R. M. Hare, was a British moral philosopher who held the post of White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford from 1966 until 1983. He subsequently taught for a number of years at the University of Florida. His meta-ethical theories were influential during the second half of the twentieth century.
R. M. Hare | |
|---|---|
Hare in 1957 | |
| Born | Richard Mervyn Hare 21 March 1919 Backwell, England |
| Died | 29 January 2002 (aged 82) Ewelme, England |
| Spouse |
Catherine Verney (m. 1947) |
| Children | John E. Hare et al. |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Balliol College, Oxford |
| Thesis | Books: "The Language of Morals" (1952) |
| Doctoral advisor | Gilbert Ryle |
| Other advisors | Gilbert Ryle, H.H. Price |
| Influences | |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Philosophy |
| Sub-discipline | |
| School or tradition | Analytic philosophy |
| Institutions | |
| Doctoral students | Denys Turner |
| Notable students | |
| Main interests | |
| Notable ideas | |
| Influenced | |
Hare is best known for his development of prescriptivism as a meta-ethical theory, which he argues is supported by analysis of formal features of moral discourse, and for his defence of preference utilitarianism based on his prescriptivism.
Some of Hare's students, such as Brian McGuinness, John Lucas, and Bernard Williams went on to become well-known philosophers. Peter Singer, known for his involvement with the animal liberation movement (who studied Hare's work as an honours student at the University of Melbourne and came to know Hare personally while he was an Oxford BPhil graduate student), has explicitly adopted some elements of Hare's thought, though not his doctrine of universal prescriptivism.